Hot and cold

With the help of eight blocks of Bluebird vanilla ice-cream, a chest freezer, a scalpel and a sub zero snowsuit I constructed what no-one had ever done: an edible scale replica of Buckingham Palace complete with columns, a courtyard and miniature corgis. I was so proud of myself I felt like I was fifty feet tall. All the while I was huddled in that freezer, painstakingly carving and chipping away, I thought of nothing but the awe-struck faces of my classmates at the next 'Show and Tell'. It was to be my crowning moment of glory.
"Mum," I yelled from my cereal bowl, on the morning of the most memorable day. "I need a lift to school."
"No can do today I'm afraid," mum said as she ferreted round the kitchen grabbing keys, fruits, half a french stick and a lump of cheese. "I've got a pregnant woman ready to burst at any minute to take care of."
I thumped a fist on the table. "And I've got an ice-cream sculpture ready to melt at any minute," I retorted.
"My patient is alive, Libby!"
"My patient is meltable, mum!"
"My patient pays for your patient."
I had nothing. Trumped by an adult, yet again.
"You'll just have to put it in a cool bag and take the bus today," mum said.
Great. Perfect.
After she spun out of the door, giving her usual carefree goodbye wave, I trudged out of the kitchen, snatched the blue cool bag out from the cupboard under the stairs and lifted open the lid of the chest freezer. There, laying at the bottom, with a cardboard cover to protect it, was my perfect sculpture.
"She may not appreciate your value, but I do," I said as I carefully lifted it out and placed it inside the cool bag.
With a few bags of ice packed round the box to keep it cool long enough to get to the school freezer I scuttled outside and into a heat wave.
Luck was not on my side. "Not a problem. I have my ice. The school is only a ten minute ride away. I can make it."
The bus, for once, arrived on time. Perhaps luck was on my side. Then promptly hit a traffic jam a mile down the road.
"Great," I sighed.
"What's up?" asked toothy Sam, the only girl in the school with more metal in her mouth than round her wrists (cheap tin bangles that turned your arms green were the current craze of the month).
"Nothing," I replied.
"Whatcha got in the bag?" she asked, reaching for the zip.
I swatted her hand away.
"Nothing," I said again.
"Is it for Show and Tell?"
I glared at her. "I don't know about you needing a brace to straighten your teeth, you need one to straighten your nose as it's poking into my business at the moment," I snapped.
"Ooooh. I take it that means yes then," Sam said before standing up and announcing to the rest of the bus. "Libby has something secret for show and tell."
I leaned back and rested my head on the metal bar of the seat. "I am going to kill mum for ditching me for an inflated woman. Why couldn't someone else have popped her?" I mumbled.
"Wot is it?" Taylor roared as he bounded up the aisle toward me.
I encircled the cool bag with my arms, knowing if that clumsy oaf got anywhere near it there'd be no palace balcony left-just a massive hole where his finger had been. He was the prodding type.
He sat on the seat in front of me, shoving sneezy Steve toward the window, and leaned over the bar.
"So, how about a bit of 'Show and Tell' then?" he said eagerly.
"Later," I snapped, and peered down the bus, willing it to move on. No chance of that. We were pinned in like the middle slice in a loaf of bread.
"Not later. Now," said Taylor.
Before I realised what had happened he had unzipped the side of the cool bag and yanked out one of the packets of ice.
He held it aloft like it was a smelly sock. "Is that it?" he asked curling his lip up in disbelief.
I looked about at the sniggering faces on the bus, all peering back at me. I didn't want to say it but for the sake of my rising temperature that was threatening the foundations of my work, I did. "Yes. That's it."
Taylor snorted, tore the bag open and proceeded to throw cubes of across the bus."Hail stones!" he yelled.
"I don't think that's it," said Sam as she peered inside the bag.
I gave her a swift elbow in the ribs. "If you don't zip it," I hissed through gritted teeth. "I'm going to wire your jaw together."
Taylor resumed his interest in my bag and dropped the ice on the aisle. "So what is it then?" he said and pulled the lid of my cool bag open.
"Stop it," I yelled. "Get your clumsy, fat meat hooks off."
"Not until you tell us what's in the box, Lippy."
"What's in the box? What's in the box? What's in the box?" was the chant that echoed up and down the bus.
Knowing that I and my sculpture were unlikely to survive the trip in tact if I didn't surrender it, I decided to lift the box off. As I gingerly grabbed the side there was a surge of kids. Everyone climbed up off their seats and were jostling for any available pocket of space that gave them a view of me and my bag. It wasn't how I wanted to impress my classmates-sat on a hot bus in the middle of a jam with a snotty boy leaning over my creation, threatening to contaminate it.
As I revealed my object, ready to welcome the gasps of awe, all I got were deflated sighs.
"What is it?" said Sam.
I peered down at my palace. "Oh, what!" I bellowed. Although the ice packs had kept the sides of Buckingham chilled, the heat from the bus and my burgeoning anger had caused the inside walls to slide down into the courtyard and my miniature corgis to look like soggy splats.
"It looks like the crater of a volcano," someone said.
"Maybe its a milk lake," said another.
"It's flippin' Buckingham Palace," I roared.
"Doesn't look like it," Taylor sneered.
"That's because it's melting, idiot."
"Buckingham Palace doesn't melt."
"This one does because it's made of flippin' ice-cream."
I snapped. Lost all control. Five solid hours of work was melting faster than the polar ice caps.
"What if we all blow on it?" proffered Sam. "That's what I do when I want to cool my dinner down."
Before I was able to stop everyone a sudden jet of air-the equivalent to a hair dryer on full power-blasted my sculpture and splattered me with dollops of ice-cream.
Everyone burst into fits of hysterics. I was indignant.
I looked down at the remains. Instead of cooling it, the gust of air made it melt quicker. The slopping insides of Buck Pal developed a soup-like consistency and my plastic Royal Standard tipped over and was wedged inside the balcony.
I could feel the rising tide of anger swell from my feet up over my knees, gathering pace as it traversed my stomach and lungs and culminating in an eruption of monumental magnitude.
"GET ME TO SCHOOL!" I yelled.

As I sat in class with my cool bag on my desk in front of me leaking from every seam, I heard the sentence I was dreading.
"So, Libby, you're next for show and tell," Miss Dyson said.
Half the class snickered from behind their text books. They knew what was about to happen.
Sluggishly, I stepped up to the podium with my sloshing cool bag and plopped it down.
"Ooh, what have we here?" she asked, peering over my shoulder.
"It did look a bit different when I left the house this morning , Miss Dyson. I promise," I said, dejectedly and unzipped the bag.
Miss Dyson peered inside and frowned.
"It's Buckingham Palace," I said as I looked down at the miniature plastic Royal Standard, floating on top of a vanilla puddle. "Or at least it was."
"Well, all I can say is, I hope the Queen survived," she said.